Lowe’s has district centers up and down the East Coast, Smithson said. As for ramping up the number of store employees, Lowe’s offered overtime hours, Smithson said.

Ace Hardware on Strasburg Road in East Bradford sold out of its supply of 90 generators priced at $799 on Sunday.

“We’d sell more if we had them,” said Helene Clair, one of the store’s owners.

On Tuesday, the store was busy selling fire logs, chain saws, propane, flashlights and D batteries, Clair said. Ace made two deliveries to the store on Tuesday.

Some cleanups, however, are too big for the average homeowner.

That’s when the phone rings at Davey Tree Experts.

The nationwide company’s local office in King of Prussia handles Chester County customers.

Chris Miller, district manager at Davey, described the office as “very busy.”

“The phone started ringing last night at the peak of the storm and it has been nonstop ever since,” Miller said. “We’re fortunate we have power at the office.”

The hardest-hit area in the Philadelphia suburbs was the Main Line from Berwyn to Gladwyne, an area with stately homes and large, old trees.

In Chester County, most calls came in from Malvern, Berwyn and Paoli, he said. Damage ranged from uprooted trees to limbs down and tangled with power lines. Limbs with power lines do not get cleared until Miller gets the OK from PECO.

For a hurricane such as Sandy, one that was predicted well ahead of time, Davey was able to get its ducks in a row before hand.

“Being a larger company, we can pull resources from other areas,” Miller said, adding that so far that has not been needed.

In the business for 25 years, Miller said he’s seen worse storms, such as Hurricane Floyd in the fall of 1999, and ranks Hurricane Sandy somewhere in the middle.

The company had four crews on the road Tuesday.

Likewise, AAA Mid-Atlantic was on the road with 619 roadside emergency calls in Pennsylvania by 2 p.m. on Tuesday. Of that, 84 were in Chester County.

The average response time was 30 minutes.

Through AAA’s Mid-Atlantic region, calls were climbing by 100 to 200 calls per hour on Tuesday night, said Jenny M. Robinson, AAA spokeswoman for the Philadelphia area.

On the other hand, “Monday was very, very slow as people heeded warnings from officials and stayed off the road,” said Robinson, who put Monday’s call number at less than a dozen.

Like hardware stores, supermarkets were rocking out the sales all weekend as shoppers stocked up on milk, eggs and bread, plus whatever snacks looked good for their extended stay at home.

At convenience chain Wawa there were a few Chester County stores that lost power Monday.

“We have a total of 168 stores still impacted by the storm (most without power, including some barrier island, New Jersey stores). The Wawa team is working hard to get the stores back open and serving the community,” Lori Bruce, Wawa spokeswoman, said Tuesday.

Wegmans Food Markets, which has stores in East Caln and East Whiteland, reported all 81 of the company’s stores in the six states were open on Tuesday.

The Rochester, N.Y.-based chain said all of its stores — which are located in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and Massachusetts — were affected to some degree by Hurricane Sandy.

Wegmans’ newest stores have pad-mounted generators that are able to keep stores operational and maintain refrigeration temperatures to keep food safe, said Jo Natale, Wegmans director of media relations. The supermarket chain also deployed its truck-mounted generators and leased additional generators.

“Many of the generators have yet to be used, but we needed to be ready not only in our stores, but in our distribution facilities and bakeshop.”

Some deliveries to Wegmans’ stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland were delayed because of road closures.

“We hope to resume a full schedule of deliveries as soon as it’s safe for our drivers to move,” Natale said Tuesday.